July 4, 2004: Headlines: COS - Afghanistan: Philadelphia Inquirer: RPCV Thomas E. Gouttierre says of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job."

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Afghanistan: Special Report: Afghanistan Expert RPCV Thomas Gouttierre: July 4, 2004: Headlines: COS - Afghanistan: Philadelphia Inquirer: RPCV Thomas E. Gouttierre says of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job."

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-141-157-22-73.balt.east.verizon.net - 141.157.22.73) on Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - 4:44 pm: Edit Post

RPCV Thomas E. Gouttierre says of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job."

RPCV Thomas E. Gouttierre says of Afghan President Hamid Karzai The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job.

RPCV Thomas E. Gouttierre says of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job."

Karzai, lacking support, struggles to fulfill vision

By Thomas Ginsberg

Inquirer Staff Writer

When Afghan President Hamid Karzai accepts the 2004 Liberty Medal in Philadelphia today, his work on rebuilding and unifying the country will be hailed as a "valiant effort."

His main achievement, however, may have been simply staying alive and in power without the full military backup promised by Europe and the United States, analysts and other observers say.

Erudite and charming, with a serene temperament like that of Gandhi, the 46-year-old leader has been compelled to lead Afghanistan from inside a bunkerlike presidential palace, protected by U.S. troops.

While conjuring a vision of a peaceful Muslim democracy in his speeches, Karzai rarely ventures to areas outside the capital of Kabul because it is too dangerous.

In fact, say some of those who observe Karzai, including his friends, Karzai's potential remains untested because the West has not given him the military and regional diplomatic support he needs to govern effectively nationwide.

And that failure may be slowly tilting the country toward chaos again.

"He has a real, real desire to help his country," said Kathy Gannon, a veteran Associated Press correspondent in South Asia now writing a book about Afghanistan. "But the international community has really done him a disservice."

In the 21/2 years since Karzai took power, his central government has established its authority slowly in Kabul but exercises little or no control outside the capital, where warlords maintain order in their fiefdoms, often with tacit U.S. support in the absence of a national army. Drug trafficking has become rampant, sometimes tied to the warlords. The Taliban has reasserted control in part of the country. Few people believe conditions exist for free and fair elections, which the Bush administration wants to see take place this year.

"He hasn't really been in control," said Thomas E. Gouttierre, a friend of Karzai and director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "The eminent power right now is our military, and his central government is competing with the warlords... . Given the conditions, he's done a remarkable job."

The Afghan Northern Alliance, backed by U.S.-led forces, toppled the Taliban from power in 2001, paving the way for Karzai to become president. There have been improvements since then. The number of children in school has quadrupled to four million.

The average daily working wage has more than doubled, from $2.70 to $6.25. And the Finance Ministry has begun demanding that regional leaders hand over the taxes they have collected.

Americans have built a modern roadway to replace a bombed-out highway linking Kabul and Kandahar - albeit at three times the $80 million budgeted cost.

But for every step forward, it seems a new problem surfaces, and, in some dispiriting instances, old problems have resprouted worse than before the war.

On Karzai's watch and under the United States' noses, Afghanistan's production of opium and processed heroin has grown larger than ever, now worth an estimated $2.3 billion to drug traffickers - some allegedly linked to members of Karzai's cabinet.

Also, the president appears to be impotent against a resurgence of the fundamentalist Taliban, whose supporters have reasserted themselves in rural areas and may effectively control a third of Afghanistan, according to several news reports in recent months.

Reports of attacks mostly in the countryside now come almost daily; about 100 U.S. soldiers have died since October 2001, when U.S. attacks began. The violence already has slowed U.N. and Afghan election officials in registering voters, forcing Karzai to postpone elections scheduled for June to September, with the possibility he may have to delay them again.

During the NATO summit in Turkey last month, France and Germany balked at Karzai's request for 20,000 troops to help secure the voting in September, agreeing to send only half that number. U.S. troops now number 11,000, aided by about 2,000 from other countries.

Karzai pleaded with the NATO leaders: "Please hurry. Come sooner than September, and provide the Afghan men and women with a chance to vote freely, without fear, without coercion."

U.S. officials reportedly are still pressing their European counterparts to increase their contribution. At the same time, the U.S. pursuit of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has forced Americans to depend on support of some of the very warlords who may be making modernization difficult for Karzai.

Karzai's call for warlord armies to leave Kabul, as they promised during peace talks, has been ignored with impunity, analysts say.

"It's not that Karzai is not strong enough to deal with them. It's that they [Americans] don't want him to take these guys," said Barnett R. Rubin, an Afghanistan expert and senior fellow at New York University's Center for International Cooperation.

In fact, Karzai probably remains in power, many analysts said, because he still does not pose a real threat to the warlords and even has tried to negotiate with them, rather than cut off their power.

"I rate him very poorly on actually running the government very well," Rubin said. "I rate him very high on articulating the long-term vision of what Afghanistan could be."
Contact staff writer Thomas Ginsberg at 215-854-4177 or tginsberg@phillynews.com.




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Story Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

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